New Steps
by Firebird9
Summary: Phryne and Jack investigate their first case after declaring their love in 'Break My Heart Tomorrow': a body found in the river with a mysterious word cut deep into its chest. But this time, their relationship adds a few new steps to the rhythm of their investigation. Heavier on the romance than the mystery.
1. Chapter 1

**New Steps**

**Rating: **T. Story contains reference to incest.

**Author: **Firebird9

_Many thanks to all the people who have taken the time to review my fics: your words bring me much happiness. This story follows on directly from 'Break My Heart Tomorrow' and assumes a (very recently) established relationship between Phryne and Jack. If you haven't already, you may want to read that fic first, but it probably isn't essential._

* * *

A little over half an hour after Constable Collins had first reached him at Phryne Fisher's house, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson arrived at the crime scene beside the Yarra, driven at a bracing clip by a high-spirited Phryne. When they finally came to a halt and he was able to tumble out he resisted the urge to kiss the ground and instead walked around to offer her his arm. She raised one eyebrow at him in question, and he reflected that perhaps they should have discussed this before they left. Of course, that had been his intention – and the reason why he had told Collins they would be there in half an hour rather than a more reasonable fifteen minutes – but they had become somewhat distracted upon returning to her room to retrieve his jacket and tie. In a frantic and thoroughly enjoyable ten minutes of passionate lovemaking they had succeeded in throwing the bed Dot had only just made back into disarray, and lost any opportunity to discuss how exactly the recent change in their personal relationship might impact on their professional lives.

"I would prefer it if we were discreet at work," he told her softly, "but I have no intention of treating you as a dirty secret."

She felt her lips curve into a smile at his words. She had worried that he might prefer to keep things quiet, at least for the moment. And whilst she wouldn't necessarily have objected, such a secret could have left him in particular vulnerable to professional repercussions were it to be revealed at an inopportune moment.

So she hooked her arm through his and fell into step beside him as they approached the area where Collins and another uniformed officer stood watch over a shrouded bundle whilst a third officer took photographs.

"Good morning Inspector, Miss Fisher." Collins nodded to them both.

"Good morning, Constable. Now, what's so 'unusual' about this victim that you felt the need to summon me on my day off?"

"Yes sir." Collins bent over the body and lifted the sheet, peeling it back. "You can see for yourself, sir."

The man was naked from the waist up. At some point either before or just after his death, someone had carved a series of large, angular letters deep into his chest.

"Well," Phryne remarked dryly, "I would say that qualifies as unusual." She and Jack exchanged glances, then moved apart and crouched down, one on either side of the victim.

"'AMNON'," Jack read aloud. "Any idea what it means?"

"None, sir," Collins answered. "Uh, I suppose it could be a misspelling of 'anon'. You know, as in anonymous-"

"An accurate enough description of the victim," Phryne interjected.

"For the moment, at least," Jack agreed.

Collins gave a slightly nervous chuckle. "Yes, miss. It could also be two words, 'am none', maybe, if the killer were interrupted before he could complete the 'e'. Or it could be foreign, or a name perhaps..."

"It's not German," Jack remarked. "At least, not that I recognise." He glanced up at Phryne. "Miss Fisher?" He knew she had at least a working knowledge of a number of languages, but this time she shook her head.

"Sorry, Jack, but it doesn't ring any bells. Collins may be right, though; it does sound like it could be a name."

"Not that that helps us much. If it is a name, I doubt it's the victim's, and I'd be even more surprised if it's the killer's." He frowned at the body. "I'm not seeing an obvious cause of death. Collins?"

"The victim suffered a severe blow to the back of the head, sir."

"Which could either have been the cause of death, or simply rendered him unconscious until he drowned in the water." He sighed, and looked at Phryne again. "What do you think, Miss Fisher; did these injuries occur before or after death?"

"Hmm," she considered, picking up the victim's wrist. "Well, there are no ligature marks, so he wasn't tied up. If they were inflicted before death, he must have already been unconscious from the blow to the head: I can't imagine anyone voluntarily permitting themselves to be cut up like this. Beyond that, I suppose we'll have to wait for the coroner to tell us how much blood the victim lost."

"Mmm." Jack briefly probed the victim's chest with a gloved hand, spreading the sides of one of the lacerations. "These wounds are deep. If he was still alive at the time, he would have bled profusely." The sound of an engine approaching alerted them to the arrival of the ambulance, and Jack and Phryne stood. "We'd like to see the back of his head," Jack asked as the attendants arrived. They nodded and heaved the body over.

"That was quite a blow," Phryne remarked. The back of the head bore a large indentation, hair matted with blood, the bone shattered, brain matter visible. Beside them, Collins gagged and moved away slightly. She glanced over at Jack and raised an eyebrow. "Not exactly how I pictured our morning ending," she remarked wryly.


	2. Chapter 2

They watched as the body was lifted onto a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance for its trip to the morgue. Jack pressed his lips together, thinking. "At this stage there's no telling where the body might have entered the water, beyond 'upstream'. Once the photographs are developed we'll circulate his image around the stations: see if anyone recognises him. Other than that, our only lead is that word: 'AMNON'."

"And we still have no idea what it means, or even what language it is," Phryne observed.

"Mmm. A pity it's Sunday, or we could at least have tried the foreign language dictionaries at the library."

A slow smile dawned on Phryne's face. "I don't pretend to have a complete library, but I do have a number of dictionaries in my study. Perhaps one of them will offer a clue?"

Up until that point, Jack had been doing well. With a dead body in front of them and Collins looking on, he and Phryne had fallen back into their familiar working rhythm, and he had managed – almost – to forget that less than an hour earlier their bodies had been entwined on her bed, her tongue tangled with his, as they made love for what was, by his count, the fourth time in a little over twelve hours. At the thought of returning to her house to conduct research in what he presumed to be her private study, however, a number of vivid and highly erotic recollections flashed across his mind's eye, and it was all he could do not to moan.

Instead, he cleared his throat. "Very good. Constable Collins, I will accompany Miss Fisher back to her residence and see if her books can shed any light on the situation. You are to return to the station and look for reports of missing persons matching our victim's description filed in the last 48 hours. If you don't find anything, widen it to 72 hours, but beyond that don't bother. That body was fresh, so he can't have been missing long."

"Yes, sir. And I'll ask around the other officers, see if 'AMNON' means anything to any of them."

He nodded. That was good thinking on his constable's part, and something he should have thought of himself. "Good idea, Collins."

They made their way back to the car arm in arm once again. Phryne's quick eye hadn't missed Jack's reaction to the thought of returning to her house, and she smiled to herself, loving the effect she was having on him, and the effect that observing it was having on her.

A short and, as always, terrifying, drive later, and they were headed back through her front door.

"Only us, Mr. B," she called airily as approaching footsteps indicated that her butler was coming to see who had arrived. "We'll be in my study. Could you have Dot bring some tea through?"

"Of course miss," Mr. Butler replied as he retreated back to his kitchen.

The study was towards the back of the house, and was not a room that Jack was familiar with, so he couldn't help but gape slightly in astonishment upon entering what was very obviously a working room lined with book-laden shelves. Phryne smirked at him.

"Well, you didn't think I spent all my money on pretty dresses, did you?" she asked.

"Of course not," he managed. "After all, you had to spend some of it on that absurdly powerful motorcar that you insist on torturing people with."

She laughed, and crossed the room to one of the shelves. "Now, as I said, I don't have a complete library, but I can cover the major European languages, as well as Russian, Chinese, Maori, Latin, and Hebrew."

He wasn't really listening, but instead walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, mouthing gently at her neck.

"Jack!" She laughed again, stretching out his name to two syllables as she tilted her head to allow him better access to her skin. "Dot will be here any moment with the tea, and we have a case to work on."

"When did you become the voice of reason and restraint?" he grumbled, lips still busy on her neck.

She arched back against him in pleasure. "Around the time you decided to abdicate the position in favour of reckless abandonment."

His hands had now begun to caress her as well, and he pressed his hips against her, letting her feel his response. "And I can see why you find it so appealing. I should have tried it years ago."

She turned her body into his, wrapping her arms around his neck and smiling coyly up at him. "I wasn't here years ago." She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "But I'm here now." A kiss to his neck. "And I have no plans to go anywhere else." A quick flick of her tongue across his earlobe, drawing a gasp of surprised pleasure from his lips before she suddenly twisted out of his grip and moved away, merriment in her eyes. "So we can continue this another time. When we've done our homework and don't have to worry about Dot walking in."

He huffed in frustration, knowing that she was right, but also conscious that this was his day off, and that if he had only ignored Collins' summons he might at this very moment be enjoying a bit more of the reckless abandon that had so suddenly seized him. He drew a deep breath, re-establishing his self-control, and threw her a slightly abashed look. She smiled tenderly and stepped closer again, brushing a chaste kiss across his lips before returning her attention to the shelves.

He accepted the books that she lifted down and piled into his arms, and was carrying the first load over to her impressively large and business-like desk when a knock at the door informed them that Dot had arrived with the tea.

"Thank you, Dot. On the desk will be fine," Phryne smiled, as Jack busied himself with the books in an effort to provide cover for the way he kept his body subtly turned from the young companion's gaze.

"Yes miss. Will there be anything else?"

"No, that's all. Unless..." Dot turned back, attentive to what Phryne had to say. "I don't suppose the word 'amnon' means anything to you?"

Dot frowned in concentration. "I don't think so, miss, but I will think about it. Would you like me to ask Mr. Butler as well?"

"Yes please. Tell him it could be a name, or foreign, or even an acronym. We don't know at this point."

"Yes miss."

* * *

_Maori, or 'te reo Maori' (lit. 'The Tongue [of the] Maori [People]') is the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand. Following European colonisation, large numbers of Maori men began to work on ships, particularly between New Zealand and Australia, and in 1929 many of them would still have used te reo, amongst themselves if nothing else. It therefore seemed reasonable that Phryne might have a Maori dictionary to hand, in case she encountered the language during a case. Happily, the language is currently enjoying something of a renaissance._


	3. Chapter 3

Jack frowned in disgust and placed the last of his dictionaries on the discard pile beside his chair. Phryne glanced up from her seat at the desk, where she was just finishing off the last of her own books. "No luck?" she enquired.

"None. I hope to God it isn't aboriginal: we may never translate it."

Phryne shook her head absently, setting aside the dictionary she had just finished with and reaching for the last one. "Nothing about that murder seemed particularly 'aboriginal' to me. AMNON obviously means something to the killer: it's just a question of whether it was a personal comment from killer to victim, or intended to have meaning for whoever found the body." She set the last book aside, a brief shake of her head indicating that it had been no more helpful than the others. "If it was intended for the victim, it would have been done while he was still conscious. Let's assume it was intended to be understood by whoever found the body. That means it can't be foreign. A name would make sense. But a name from where?"

"I've never come across it before."

She quirked her lip at him. "So it probably isn't Shakespeare, then. Where else might one find a name that isn't widely used but would still be fairly widely recognisable?"

They were silent for a moment, Jack frowning at the carpet, Phryne casting her eyes around the room for inspiration. Idly, she ran her gaze along her shelves, hoping that a title might leap out at her. Almost immediately, one did. "Of course!" She was across the room in a moment, retrieving the book from the shelf and waving it triumphantly at Jack. "The Bible. What other book is as widely known, and found in almost every home in Australia? And what other book contains a cast of thousands of obscure characters and events, known to the initiated, but a mystery to the less religiously inclined?"

He was on his feet and at her side as her smile faded in the face of an obvious problem.

"I agree that it seems like the right answer, but even if Amnon is in there, how do we find him? Dot didn't recognise the name, so it must be obscure, and we hardly have time to read the whole book."

Once again they both frowned in thought, until Phryne handed the pristine, leather-bound volume to Jack and reached up onto the shelf again. "We don't have to: we just have to look him up." She carried a large, heavy book over to the desk and set it down. "Strong's Exhaustive Bible Concordance. A complete alphabetical index of every single word in the Bible."

"Every single word?"

"With its Hebrew or Greek root, and cross-referenced to every other occurrence of the original word in scripture. Hence 'exhaustive'."

"I would never have picked you for a biblical scholar, Phryne," he remarked as he set the Bible down by her hand.

"Jack! You know I've been an ardent pursuer of biblical knowledge for years."

He snorted with laughter at the double entendre as Phryne heaved open the cover of the concordance and continued their search for 'Amnon', then leaned over her shoulder with his arm curled almost absently around her waist. Her small cry of triumph informed him that this time she had found what they were after.

"Here. Second Samuel 3, verse 2. A son of king David. And again at Second Samuel 13, verse 1. There's a whole cluster of them."

Jack was already flipping through the pages of the Bible, endeavouring to locate the requisite section. "Here." He sat down in her chair, and she moved unthinkingly to his lap. He glanced up at her, then back down at the book in his hands, and read aloud. "'And it came to pass after this that Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her. And Amnon was so vexed that he fell sick for his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin; and Amnon thought it hard for him to do anything to her.'"

He paused, and they glanced at one another again. "I think I can see where this is going," Phryne remarked grimly, and Jack abandoned reading aloud in favour of skimming ahead.

"He rapes her," he confirmed in tones every bit as grim as Phryne's, still skimming. "And King David is 'very wroth' but doesn't seem to do anything about it."

"Of course not."

"Mmm. But Absalom feels differently, and murders Amnon two years later."

"Well as far as I'm concerned, he had it coming." Phryne folded her arms and scowled, her eyes glittering dangerously.

He sighed. "Unfortunately, the law does not see it your way. We have our Amnon; now we just need to locate our Absalom." He gave a sad smile. "And our poor Tamar, wherever she may be."

"It isn't fair, Jack! Some poor girl is raped by her brother, and instead of helping protect her we're going to take away the only person who cares enough about her to do something about it."

"Phryne..." He set the Bible aside and wrapped his arms around her as he had wanted to do so many times in the past when she was upset. He pulled her face into the crook of his neck, feeling her shift her body to fit more snugly against his. He kissed her cheek. "I understand how you feel, love. I do. But we can't abandon the law in favour of vengeance. Think what horrors that would unleash." He sighed, wishing he could fix things somehow. "Phryne?" He nudged her head gently with his until she looked up at him, eyes glittering with angry tears, lips pouting not artfully for once but in genuine sorrow. He used his thumb to caress her cheek and drew her down for a kiss. "I'm sorry, love, that I can't make it any different."

She nodded, calmer now, her hand caressing the back of his neck. "I do understand, Jack. I know what we have to do."

He shook his head slightly. "You don't have to, Phryne, not if you don't want to. I can handle this case with Collins: you don't have to be involved." The kindness – the understanding – in his tone and the look on his face astounded her, and she found herself thinking, not for the first time, that perhaps being vulnerable with this man wasn't so bad. "I don't want to see you unhappy. Having to arrest 'Absalom' for murder, knowing that he will hang... I can understand why you don't want to be involved in that."

"But you have to be."

He nodded. "It's my job. I am the law's servant-"

"-not its master," she finished for him, and as he nodded again, a slight smile on his lips, she made her decision. "This is our case. I want to see it through."

She had expected some resistance, some comment to imply that her personal feelings might compromise her involvement, but instead he just nodded for a third time. "Very good."


	4. Chapter 4

_The Bible does not condone everything it contains. Family dysfunction was as common in biblical times as it is today, and the tragic tale of Tamar, Absalom and Amnon is part of a longer thread which illustrates how a parent's poor example (in this case, King David's adultery with Bathsheba and subsequent murder of her husband Uriah) can have repercussions which reverberate down the generations._

* * *

Jack scribbled notes on their discovery in his notebook as Phryne returned the dictionaries and the concordance to their places on the shelves.

"Do we want to take lunch now, or head down to the station?" she asked. Jack considered, glancing at his watch.

"I'll call Collins and let him know what we've found. You never know, he may have something for us as well. If not, I don't think that there's much more we can do today."

She smiled. "I'll let Mr. Butler and Dot know about lunch. Something light, perhaps. Sandwiches and cake?"

He smiled. He couldn't recall ever having breakfasted as late as he had that morning, not even on his honeymoon. Although he couldn't recall making love so many times in one day even then, either. Reckless abandon, he thought. He could hardly adopt it as a full-time lifestyle, but it really did have a lot to recommend it. His eyes followed Phryne as she left the room. Now that he had had time to consider, he was glad that she had rebuffed him – albeit in the most thoughtful way possible – when he had embraced her earlier. He had allowed his desire for her to distract him in the middle of a case, and that was a dangerous habit to risk falling into. No, if they were to pursue a long-term relationship, they would have to keep their private and professional lives separate as much as possible.

She returned from her mission a few moments later, and closed the door behind her with a soft but definite click. One look at her face, and he knew that 'professional' had just been superseded by 'personal'. "Lunch will be ready in about half an hour," she told him as she walked slowly towards him across the carpet. "And since I can't see us making any more progress on the case before then..." she trailed off, wrapping her arms around his neck and tilting her face up invitingly. He dropped his notebook on the desk and pressed his mouth to hers.

...

'Five times', he thought vaguely some while later, his face buried in her neck where she sat perched on the edge of the desk, half their clothing gone, her legs still wrapped around his waist. It was not a position he had ever tried before, and, God help him, he just _knew_ it was all he was going to be able to think about the next time she walked into his office and seated herself on his desk as she was wont to do. He tried to think of some way of expressing his feelings in words, and could only come up with a soft "God, Phryne."

She chuckled, and he felt her hands move along his back in caress. "I love you, Jack Robinson," she whispered softly, and he straightened to kiss her once again before meeting her eye.

"I love you too, Phryne Fisher," he whispered back, and saw her smile. He leaned his forehead against hers and held her there for a long moment more. A sudden tap on the door broke the quiet, and he jumped slightly.

"Miss? Luncheon is ready," Mr. Butler called deferentially.

"Thank you, Mr. Butler, we'll be there in a few moments," Phryne replied, as the lovers reluctantly parted.

"Do you think they know what we were doing?" Jack asked as he began to reassemble his clothing.

She shrugged, pausing in rearranging her own clothing and looking slightly abashed. "Probably." Her hand touched his arm. "Is that a problem?"

Her eyes were suddenly wide with concern, and he thought for a moment before answering. "I suppose since they already know we're lovers it doesn't really matter whether they know that we made love in your bed last night, or in your study this afternoon. Although I can't say the same for the station."

She smirked at him. "I promise I'll always be on my best behaviour when you're working. You can always reward me afterwards."

He felt his mouth go dry again, and was both amazed and slightly rueful at the sensation. How could he be responding to her again so soon? he wondered. He was well past the age of adolescent fervour; it simply shouldn't be possible for her to evoke this kind of response in him again when they had barely finished making love. His fingers fumbled with his tie, and he gave up his attempt to knot it and swung it out to lasso her and draw her to him instead. "I suppose good girls should be rewarded," he promised huskily, and was gratified to see her lips part and her pupils dilate at his words. Evidently he was not the only one caught off guard by the intensity of their passion.

She was startled when Jack swung out suddenly to capture her, but not frightened. No, it wasn't fright that made her heart pound, but a rush of desire so intense that her knees almost collapsed beneath her. And his promise to reward her if she was a good girl...

Shakily, she took the length of silk from his fingers (and oh! but she could think of a few uses for that which she was suddenly very interested in introducing him to, now that he had decided to introduce the idea of 'restraining' her with it) and draped it around his neck. She was reminded powerfully of the night at her cousin Guy's engagement party when she had loosened his tie in the bedroom, the heat that had smouldered in his eyes even then. It was nothing compared to the way he was looking at her now as she knotted the tie and gently tightened it against his throat.

He drew a deep breath, visibly calming himself. "Lunch," he said in a voice that shook only slightly.

"Lunch," she agreed, stepping away from the seductive heat of his body.


	5. Chapter 5

A little over an hour later they were back at the station. Hugh Collins had made no progress with 'Amnon', but had struck unexpected gold when he began ringing around the other stations with his description of the dead man. A constable from Fitzroy had recognised him, not as a missing person, but as someone he had arrested for brawling just a couple of weeks earlier. A distinctive scar on the victim's forearm had rung a bell, and the file the constable had sent over to City South had included a photograph that confirmed it.

"Peter Halswell, a.k.a Peter White," Jack read aloud. "Twenty-one years old, arrested twice for harassing a female, and again for brawling-" he turned the page and skimmed ahead "-over a woman."

"Sounds like our man," Phryne observed in a tone that mingled anger and contempt.

"Lives in Collingwood with his widowed mother," Jack finished.

"Collingwood..." she had considered going back ever since she had returned to Melbourne, but somehow she never had. She supposed she was scared – no, she _knew_ she was scared – of what going back might do to her.

Jack's gentle touch on her arm recalled her to the present moment. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather I took Collins?"

She thought for a moment, then straightened, determined. "I can't run away forever," she told him firmly.

...

The house was a grim, pokey thing, surrounded by other houses that were similarly grim and pokey. There was little that was fresh, or green, or clean in their surroundings; broken furniture and rubbish on the street, the gutter overflowing with filth. Phryne shuddered. She remembered all of this, the squalor that inevitably accompanied the presence of a large number of people so ground down by circumstance that they had simply stopped caring.

She waited until Jack opened the door of the police vehicle for her, and stepped down. No, this was not her childhood home, or even her childhood street, but it might as well have been. Grubby children that might have been her and Janey not so very many years ago hovered at a distance, both fascinated and frightened by the police car, and intrigued by the fine lady who was being handed down from it. No doubt intrigued, too, by the idea of a man who would offer a woman his arm rather than roughly dragging her wherever he wanted her to go.

"Easy, Phryne," he whispered, and she could see the concern in his eyes, concern for her personally, rather than their case. She knew that if she asked him to he would take her away from there immediately, even if it meant losing their first lead on the killer.

"I'm alright, Jack," she murmured in return, trying to force herself to believe it.

It took a moment for the door to open at his knock, suspicious eyes peering through the crack. "Whaddya want?"

"Mrs. Halswell? I'm Detective Inspector Jack Robinson. I'm afraid it's about your son."

The door was thrown back, revealing a woman who might have been beautiful once, before the cruelty of her character and the burden of her lot in life etched themselves into her features. "My Peter ain't done nothin' wrong!" she snarled. "'F those whores wanna go testing a man's restraint they should be grateful they don't get more. 'N men what run with whores outta know what to expect."

Jack and Phryne exchanged a look. "Your son is dead, Mrs. Halswell." Jack told her. "We fished his body out of the Yarra this morning. Now, may we come in and ask a few questions? It might assist us in finding his killer."

"My Petey? Dead?" Mrs. Halswell staggered backwards into the small room on the other side of the door, and collapsed into a chair at the rough wooden table.

"I'm afraid so." He gave her a moment to absorb what he had said, waiting until she seemed ready to continue. "Mrs. Halswell, can you recall the last time you saw your son?"

"O' course. We 'ad dinner together last night. A nice bit o' mutton, almos' fresh."

"And then were did he go?"

"Pub, with a few of his mates. I thought he'd just stopped over with one o' them."

"I see. And do you have any other children?"

Her expression darkened with what could only be called hatred. "None of my own. Just a stepson, Thomas. But he ain't welcome here anymore, not after what he tried to say about my Petey."

"What about daughters?" Phryne spoke for the first time, barely-contained anger in her voice.

"Not any more. My step-daughter, Annie, stupid little tart, went an' got herself in the family way a few years ago. Drowned herself in the Yarra. Best thing all round, 'f ya ask me."

Jack gave Phryne a sharp look, hoping she wasn't about to do anything foolish. Her eyes glittered with a dangerous combination of anger and pain, and after a moment she turned and walked swiftly from the house, all but slamming the door behind her.

"And what exactly did Thomas have to say about your Petey?"

...

She was sitting in the car when he emerged a few minutes later, her face still set in anger, tears on her cheeks. "It's this place, Jack," she said, when he was seated beside her, regarding her in wordless sympathy. "It's what it does to people. It sucks all the goodness and compassion out of you, all the altruism and understanding, until all that's left is animals clawing at each other. All you remember of yesterday is the grudges; all you know of tomorrow is that it's better not to think about it because it'll only be like today, or worse. And so you drink, and you whore, and you fight, and you never give a damn about anyone or anything, because what's the point when no-one gives a damn about you?"

"Phryne..." he was lost for words.

"Just go, Jack," she closed her eyes, tilting her head back tiredly. "Just take me away from here, anywhere, please. I should never have come."


	6. Chapter 6

He drove until he found a park, fresh and green and the antithesis of all that Collingwood had been. He parked the vehicle and once again handed her down, offering her his arm. For a few moments they wandered in silence, until the tension drained away from Phryne and she led him over to a bench. He sat close to her, his arm about her shoulders.

"Are you alright?" he asked eventually, not knowing what else to say.

She sighed, leaning into him. "I will be. It's just... being there brought it all back. All the things I've tried so hard to forget. Not about Janey, but about what it was like, to live like that. To have that fear always hanging over you, hunger always gnawing at you." She looked up at him from haunted eyes. "Desperation, Jack. Do you have any idea what that's like to live with?"

He nodded slowly, and at her sceptical eyebrow said simply "the trenches."

He saw understanding and sympathy in her gaze before she continued. "It's like a war, every day. You don't dare to think about the past, or the future. You don't dare to hope, or plan, or dream." Her tone hardened. "And if you want something, or someone, you don't bother to think about the consequences of your actions, or how they might feel about it. You just... take."

Jack nodded. "Mrs. Halswell said Thomas got an apprenticeship at a mechanic's in Fitzroy. We'll have to wait until tomorrow, but with luck we'll be able to track him down there. Under the circumstances, I can't see her tipping him off that we're after him."

She nodded and sighed. "Then I suppose it's time we headed back to the station."

...

She dropped into the chair across from him as he pulled paper and pen near and began working on his report. A few moments later, Collins entered with tea, handing them each a cup.

"Thank you, Constable."

"You're welcome, sir." Hugh left, pulling the door almost shut behind him. Jack sipped his tea, then sighed, regarding Phryne over the rim of his cup.

"I shouldn't have taken you with me, should I?" he observed gently.

She took a sip of her own tea, her eyes regretful. "Probably not."

He set his cup aside and walked around to her, laying a hand on her shoulder as she looked up at him, calmer now but still not her usual carefree self. "The problem is, I find it almost impossible to say no to you."

She smiled slightly at that. "As I recall, you managed it for almost two years. That's more than most men."

He chuckled softly, relieved that she could still joke. "Do you want me to stay with you tonight?" He removed his hand from her shoulder and leaned back against his desk, keeping his voice low, aware of the partially-open door, and the second, closed, door leading deeper into the station. The very walls had ears.

She sipped her tea again before answering in similarly quiet tones. "Do you want to stay with me tonight?"

"I..." he tried to think of a way to answer that could put into words all that he wanted and needed without risking hurting her. "I never want to be apart from you, Phryne, not ever. But, I don't know how to do this. The first night I spent with Rosie was our wedding night. I don't know how to be with someone I'm not married to, who I'm not sharing a home with."

"You want to go home," she interpreted without, he was relieved to see, evidence of either surprise or hurt. "A clean shirt, some time to think. Did you ever dissect a frog when you were at school?"

The tangent was so sudden and unexpected, even from her, that he could only stare at her in bemusement. "I... once, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Miss Charlesworth had us do it once. Well, some of the girls refused." She rolled her eyes, and he knew she hadn't been one of them. "You remember how it goes, I'm sure. You chloroform the poor creature, then you pin it down, peel back the skin and cut it apart, piece by piece. By the end, you know everything there is to know about how a frog works; and the frog is dead."

"I hope you're not comparing me to a frog?" he asked, amused.

"Only if you found a princess to kiss you a very long time ago. No, what I mean is, I don't know how to make this work, either, except that if we spend too much time examining it in order to work out the answer, we might very well find we've killed it in the process. At least you've been married. For the last ten years I've strenuously avoided commitment, or anything that looked like commitment, or anything that looked like it could start looking like commitment if I looked at it too long. I haven't the faintest idea how to do this, except that you're right, this isn't a marriage. You still have your home, and I assume you'd like to spend at least some time there."

He nodded, although he wasn't sure why. His house was a cold, empty, silent place, and had been for longer than he cared to think about. He couldn't simply move in with Phryne lock, stock, and barrel, but he was suddenly resolved that he would find another alternative soon, and sell the damned house that was little more than a mausoleum to dead hopes and dreams. It was time to look to the future.

"But you will always be welcome with me, Jack, in my home and in my bed. And when you're not there, I don't want you to wonder whether anyone else will be. Because there won't be anyone else." She kept her gaze levelly on his. It was a tremendous promise to make, and she felt a stab of apprehension at the enormity of trying to keep it, but she knew that she would indeed try. And she had an awful lot of _try_ in her.

He smiled at her. "Then I shall see you here tomorrow morning."


	7. Chapter 7

They met at the station a little after nine the next morning. Phryne had spent half the night thinking about Jack, and the other half dreaming about him, so when she finally saw him sitting there behind his desk she had to resist the urge to straddle his lap and start unknotting his tie right then and there. But, she reminded herself, if she was a good girl now he might just reward her later. Her lips curved at the thought, and she realised that she had not only missed whatever it was he had said but also somehow missed the fact that he was now standing right beside her.

"Sorry, Jack, I was miles away."

The corners of his eyes creased with amusement. "I said, are you ready?"

His words recalled her to their sad task: apprehending a young man who had killed to avenge his sister, and setting in motion the wheels of justice that would hang him. She drew a deep breath. "I am."

Collins drove, and she had the perfect opportunity to study the back of Jack's neck as they approached the Fitzroy garage that was Thomas Halswell's last known place of work. The only photograph Mrs. Halswell had been able to supply had been years out of date, but even so it was easy enough to recognise their man. He straightened at their approach and showed neither surprise nor fear, nor any sign of either running or fighting, but simply stood and waited for them to close the gap between them.

"'Absalom'?" Jack asked, as Constable Collins produced the handcuffs.

Halswell smiled slightly. "I knew someone would figure it out."

...

He came quietly and sat calmly at the table in the interview room, Phryne and Jack seated across from him and Collins taking notes in the background.

"I suppose you've figured out why I did it?" Halswell asked, and Jack nodded. "Our mother died when we were little. I doubt Annie even remembered her. It was tough; our father tried his best, but what does a man know about raising two little ones? A year or so later he met Elsie White. She had a son, Peter. He was only a year older than me, but a lot bigger. So there they were, a man on his own with two little ones, and a woman with a son in need of a father. They did the logical thing. Right from the start, Peter bullied us mercilessly, especially me. My stepmother always took his part, and dad always took her part, so there weren't nothing much we could do. We stuck together as much as we could, stayed away as much as we could, and life went on. But then, when I was about fifteen, I found Annie crying."

For the first time, expression filled his face: anger and grief and hatred. "She told me he'd been interfering with her. At night, or any time he could get her alone. She never felt safe, and he always told her she was asking for it and he'd hurt her if she ever said anything. She begged me not to tell, and what could I do? I started looking for work after that. I thought, if I could just get a job, if I just had money, I could take her away. But who wants to hire a skinny kid from Collingwood what can barely read and write?

"Anyway, one night Annie stands up to clear the dishes from the table, and Elsie takes one look at her and goes 'what have you been up to, you filthy slut?' And as soon as I looked at her, I could see what she meant: Annie was expecting. Well, dad started shouting, and Annie was crying, and Peter was smirking at it all, and I couldn't take it any more. I started yelling at him, I don't remember what, except that I said it was all his fault, and Elsie called me a filthy liar and started screaming about how we'd had it in for her and Petey ever since she and dad had married, and somewhere in all of that, Annie ran out of the house. I didn't even see her go." He drew a shuddering breath and repeated, "I didn't even see her go." Head down, he wept for a few moments.

"What happened then?" Phryne prompted gently.

"They found her body in the Yarra the next day. She drowned herself." He looked up, agony in his eyes. "She drowned herself because of him, because of them, and there was nothing I could do to stop it." Another deep breath, and he continued in a calmer tone. "That day I left home forever. Dad came to see me, a few months before he died, tried to talk to me about coming back. I asked him if Peter was still there, and he said of course he was, so I told him to go to hell. Few months later, he was dead. Then I saw Peter hanging around near the garage a few weeks ago. He was watching the bosses daughter, and I knew," he shook his head. "I knew what that filthy bastard was thinking. Why not? He got away with it once, why not do the same thing again? And my father was dead, and Annie too, and I thought, why not? Why not make the bastard pay for his sins, and make his mother suffer the way her son made me and Annie suffer, and save another innocent girl the pain my sister went through? So I went back to Collingwood. I followed him when he went out with his friends, and when he staggered home, drunk of course, I was waiting for him with a piece of lead pipe."

He smiled grimly. "One good whack to the back of his head, and it was all over. I dragged him into a truck from work, drove him down to the river, and carved his sins right into his chest. I wanted everyone who saw him to know what he'd done. Then I threw him off of the same bridge my sister must have jumped off, and drove the truck back to the garage. You can hang me now and I don't care. I did a good day's work the day I made Peter White pay for his sins."


	8. Chapter 8

There was no question of where Jack would end up that night. The end of a case meant drinks in Phryne's parlour, and Mr. Butler showed no surprise when he opened the door to find the Inspector waiting outside. "Is Miss Fisher in?"

The man smiled. "To you, sir, Miss Fisher is always in."

The approval on her butler's face reflected the expression he had seen on Collins' earlier that day, after he had walked Phryne back out to her car. "By the way, sir," the young man had whispered when he came back into the station, "I know it isn't really my place, but, well done, sir."

He had been unable to keep the smile off his own face. "You're right, it really isn't your place," he had replied, "but thank you, Collins."

And now here he was, back in Phryne's parlour where all this had started. Was it really only three days ago? Three days to swing from heartache to passion to a deep sense of belonging and love and contentment as Phryne rose from her chair by the fire and padded in bare feet to meet him and twine herself in his arms.

"Inspector Robinson, how lovely to see you," she purred, and he smiled and kissed her deeply.

"I seem to recall agreeing to something about a reward, if you behaved yourself at the station. And since you were so very good..." he ran his hands down her body and gently but firmly grasped her buttocks, drawing a squeak of startled pleasure from her lips "... I've come to keep my promise."


End file.
